The Giants are down to $3,918,376 in cap space according to Thursday's NFLPA report, which doesn't account for the contract agreed to this week by offensive lineman John Jerry. Jerry's three-year, $10 million contract will have a $1.75 million cap hit in 2017.

With the cap space nearly gone and some roster holes still to be filled, many Giants fans are fretting. Part of the concern is based on the fact that the Giants need to reserve some cap space to sign their draft picks.

A league source provided the contract figures for each of the seven slots the Giants hold in this year's draft. Barring any trades, the contracts of the Giants' seven draft picks will have a combined $5,517,776 salary cap hit in 2017.

Understandably, that leads many to believe the Giants need a little more than $5.5 million in cap space to sign their draft picks. But that's not the case, because only the top 51 player contracts count against the salary cap in the offseason.

Every draft pick will bump a player out of the top 51 or won't count enough against the cap to crack the top 51. If a rookie isn't in the top 51, only his prorated bonus money counts against the cap, according to OTC.

So, the Giants will just need enough cap space to cover the difference between the cap hits for their draft picks and the players they replace in the top 51. OTC provides a simple formula to determine the maximum actual cap space needed:

Rookie pool - ($465,000 x Number of picks) = Actual cap space needed

The Giants' rookie pool is the $5,517,776 figure mentioned earlier. The $465,000 figure in the equation is the minimum salary for a rookie in 2017. And the Giants have seven draft picks. So, the actual cap space needed is $2,262,776, according to that equation.